2015-05-04
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Pu Zhiqiang (front right) attends a seminar about the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing, May 3, 2014.
Photo courtesy of CHRD
Authorities in the Chinese capital have once more extended the detention of prominent rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who has now spent a year behind bars without trial, after he marked the anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement.
Pu, 50, is being charged with “incitement to subvert state power,” “incitement to separatism,” “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” and “illegally obtaining citizens’ information.”
But authorities have obstructed meetings with his lawyers, who have accused them of deliberately delaying Pu’s case to stretch out his detention.
“They are still deciding whether or not to take his case to court,” one of Pu’s defense lawyers, Mo Shaoping, told RFA.
“The opinion of his lawyers can be summarized in a single sentence,” he said. “We are of the opinion that the final result of the police investigation is that none of the four charges against Pu Zhiqiang will stand up.”
“Therefore, we submit that the prosecutors’ office should decide against proceeding to trial,” Mo said.
Pu, one of a number of prominent lawyers currently behind bars in China, was detained following a May 3, 2014 discussion forum on the Tiananmen anniversary.
Within days, his own lawyer Qu Zhenhong was also detained by Beijing police on suspicion of “illegally gathering citizens’ information.”
Mo said that Qu and Pu will face trial together, if the case against them proceeds.
“She is part of the same case,” he said.
Detention extended
A second member of Pu’s defense team, Shang Baojun, said he had confirmed that the state prosecutor had extended Pu’s detention by 15 days on Monday.
But he said the extension isn’t an indication that the case is ready to move to trial. “If it was going to go to trial, they wouldn’t have needed the extension,” Shang said.
“It’s possible that they can’t decide what to do,” he said. “We will have to wait and see.”
But he said that Pu appeared prepared for all eventualities. “He had his family send him clothes to wear in court,” Shang said.
China’s embattled legal profession ended 2014 with at least seven prominent rights attorneys behind bars, in one of its worst years since its resurgence in the 1980s, rights groups said.
Those jailed include Pu, Qu, Ding Jiaxi, Tang Jingling, Xia Lin and Xu Zhiyong.
Activist arrested
Meanwhile, authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Sunday approved the formal arrest of rights activist Chen Yunfei, detained on April 30 for trying to mark the anniversary of the student movement and the bloodshed that ended it on June 4, 1989.
Chen faces charges of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” and the more serious “incitement to subvert state power,” a charge listed in Article 105 of China’s Criminal Law that carries a maximum jail term of five years, or longer in the case of “ringleaders” or in “serious” cases.
“This is ridiculous, totally ridiculous,” Chen’s defense lawyer Ran Tong told RFA. “This is totally in breach of the government’s policy of rule by law … which has brought no benefits to society.”
